YCGL - The New Adventure - May to July 21-24, 2022

 YCGL - The New Adventure - Backing Up and Moving Forward......

May to July 21-24, 2022

Dear Friends,

When I started writing this blog back in February, 2021, it was primarily so that I could inform Erik and Liz and both my families (Edgar and Wojahn) that I was traveling and that I was ok to drive the motorhome by myself, make short and long term arrangements and basically survive on my own.  It was a big step to travel without Sally, my co-pilot, and quite possibly, I wouldn't handle it so well.  It was important information to pass on, but it also became a somewhat intimate (really, maybe more Factual than intimate) diary of everything that was going on during my travels.  And then, when I got home from my Minnesota trip, it just died.  No motorhome trips, no blog.

So it made sense to start the blog up again when I got the new travel trailer.  I got the first two items out about the truck/trailer and the first camping trip.  But to talk about the second trip, I need to add some background, and this changes things from a travel blog to a life blog, and maybe that's a good thing also.  I found during those two long trips that I enjoyed writing about my life, and maybe it should be more about me and what's happening than just the motorhome/trailer/camping.  

Sooooo, here goes.......

I got back from Minnesota on May 15.  There was a lot going on for the next two weeks getting ready for June 2nd, Sally and my 50th Anniversary which she didn't quite make.  However, I was determined that it should still be a celebration of our wonderful life together, and make it as much as a party as I could.  And it was a grand celebration!  To wit:

Erik arrived on Friday, May 27.  We had a few days together before Liz came in from Portland on Sunday, May 29.  I smoked up a 10 lb. pork butt on Tuesday, May 31 before, during and after Jaye and Jere arrived.  (I quit pulling the pork at 2:00am the next morning after they arrived, but that's not a surprise.)  So here were the five of us together, just as we had been before and after Sally died.  This (and Juhl)  is my support group and my cheering squad, this is my family that is so close to me.  

Juhl (Came up for June 2nd), Jere, Jaye

Erik, Me, Liz

My Family....At Sally's Piano!!

(I need/want to back that statement up.  I first met Jaye, Jere and Juhl  in September of 1969 when Sally and I were starting sophomore year at Boulder.  They, and Sandy and Wilb, lived in Fort Collins, 55 miles away.  We would go up to Fort Fun or Rocky Mountain National Park about every three weeks or so for the weekend.  We attended school and church activities and camped in Wilb and Sandy's pop-up trailer.  When Sally and I got married, the three kids were in the wedding, etc.  Sal and I moved to New Jersey after graduating in 1972 and stayed there 18 months.  Wonderful experience and phenomenal to get away from there and move back to Fort Collins, Colorado again.  Then, of course, being in graduate school from Sept 1974 to Aug 1983, we were with the kids a lot.  We went to plays, to museums, to dinners, to camping again.  We were close.  Jaye did her undergraduate in Civil Engineering at Colorado State University while I was there, and she graduated three months before I did (with my Ph.D.).  Jere went to Univ of Colorado in Boulder in Chemical Engineering, graduating in 1984.  Juhl did his own thing and graduated from CSU in English and Art about 1988 or so.  And of course, Erik was born in 1981, so there were trips both directions to share with the Wojahn's and with Erik and later Liz.  To say that Jaye, Jere and Juhl are part of my family is only to acknowledge that they were part of our lives growing up as much as we were a part of theirs.  Sadly, we never had that close, consistent relationship with my own brothers and families as we did with Sandy and Wilb.  A thousand mile separation does that, but they both had mom and dad right there to make up for it.  Luckily, Erik and Liz have made it a point to be with Mike and Pete's kids and grandkids as much as possible.  I'm so very thankful for that!)

June 1st, we went down to Fort Collins to have a birthday celebration for Juhl's wife Lisa who had to work the next day.  It was a great gathering, like always, Juhl and Lisa love to put on a spread.   

Jere, Lisa, Juhl, Arthur, Erik

Liz, wife of Robert, Liz, Jaye, Me

The next day was Thursday, June 2, our actual anniversary day.  In addition to the family, we also had the Covid Bubble come over for a celebration lunch as well.  We had the pulled pork that I had smoked on Tuesday and what would have been a good, old time 4th of July lunch spread.  We talked for almost 6 hours.  The reason for the afternoon meal instead of dinner was that I was planning on going up into the Snowies and scattering some of Sally's ashes.  I hadn't had an opportunity to go up and check the campground, so I called the Forest Service and they said that there was snow everywhere and that we couldn't even get into the campground, so we stayed home and talked.

Erik, Juhl, Jere, Jaye, Liz, Judy Rohr, Susan Larsen

Joe Lord, Me, Mary O'Flannigan

This was a special day for me for a lot of reasons, and one was that it was only the second time that Judy had been in a group outside her own family since Covid started.  She really wanted to be with us.  

Friday, the 3rd, was another big day.  When Sally was at Hospice, I saw that they did not have a piano in their living room.  From previous discussions, we knew that neither Erik nor Liz wanted the baby grand, our church had enough pianos and most everywhere I checked, no one else did either.  So I suggested to Erik and Liz that we could give it to Hospice, which they thought was a great idea.  I checked it out with several hospice officials and they were very excited to get it.  

One of Sally's dear friends was against giving away the piano too quickly, and so we kept it.  She was right, I was more attached to the piano during the first couple of months.  By the anniversary though, no one had played it and it was just time for it to go to another home.  The piano movers came that morning, got it out of the house and down the deck stairs, loaded into the trailer and moved to Hospice.  The five of us (Erik, Liz, Jaye, Jere and me) were there, agreed on the location in the room and it was done.  (The owner of the piano moving business was an undergrad and graduate student of mine back in the 80s.  He has worked as a hydrologist all these years, and took over the piano moving business when the owner of the piano store in town decided to quit moving pianos.  It was great to see him and have a chance to catch up.)  Since none of us play the piano, Liz, one of the wonderful nurses that helped (was a blessing to!) Sally sat down and showed it really did work!

  

    

Then it was noon so we had lunch at Bernie's, an old Mexican restaurant in town.  We decided to go up into the mountains anyway and just enjoy the scenery.  As we got up into the mountains and the forest, it looked pretty bare to us, so after driving to Lake Marie (whose great grandson was a student of mine) and taking pictures, 

    

Lake Marie is still icy                                               Siblings!

 we went back to the North Fork campground.  It was totally dry, not a patch of snow in sight.

Jere had thoughtfully packed Sally's ashes in the car so we were able to take them to the place we had selected years ago.  It was a bit of a hike (frankly more than I remembered) but I'm sure it was the place.  

I dug a hole next to the tree and then we each had an opportunity to say farewell as we wanted.  It was solemn, quiet, peaceful, healing to know she was in a place where she wanted to be.  She always liked Sandy's idea of having her ashes scattered at special places, and this was where she wanted to be centered.  I, of course, was pretty focused on the moment, but Jaye and Jere took pictures of us as we each placed the ashes.  Jere took one of me just as I finished that I will remember forever.  

Was Sally there with us?  I have no doubt whatsoever.  And I think it was the only picture Jere had with the beam of light.  Where was it?  It is located 500 feet up the North Fork Trail and 175 feet to the river.  

      

The three points together are GPS coordinates where the tree was located.  The two blue points were from the day we were there on June 3.  The red point was from when I was up on July 23.  The three points are within 10 feet of each other, so I feel pretty confident that the location is correct.  The variation is due in part to the tree canopy blocking the satellites plus it's a phone and not a GPS unit.  The point at the bottom is of a log going across the stream (the North Fork of the Little Laramie River) and is located 20 feet away.  Next time I go up, I'll have a program for runners to indicate the path to get there and I will have a plaque that I'll place on the tree so that we'll know exactly in the future.  

We celebrated the end of the day by stopping at the Bear Bottom Tavern and Cafe for beers on the way home and sat on the upstairs deck, watching the clouds, reminiscing and just enjoying being together.  

Erik left the next morning, Saturday the 3rd, Jaye and Jere left on Sunday the 4th and Liz left on Wednesday the 8th.  I can't express how much their being with me has meant to me.  

At the end of Act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, the main character, the Marschallin, sings a beautiful (sad) aria about lost love, growing old (she's in her early thirties) and taking on new responsibilities.  At one point, the orchestra softly sounds a bell like in a clock tower sounding the time.  Only the bell rings thirteen times.  It is a reference to a Viennese saying that one's life is complete when the clock strikes thirteen.  

I believe I heard the clock.

_____________________________________________________________________

July 21-24

I got up to the North Fork Campground about 5:00, found a reasonable site, got level and situated about 6:00 and then snoozed a little.  Fixed tacos for dinner.  Went to sleep reasonably early.  

Friday, the 22nd.  All I can remember from Friday is the back of my eyelids.  I must have slept 18 hours that day.  Don't know why, and that's probably why I Did sleep so long.

Saturday, the 23rd.  Saturday I/it was hot.  All the way until late afternoon.  My intent that day was to find Sally's tree walking up the path along the river.  It has been a number of years since I walked that way, and it has really grown over and been fallen over.  The pine bark beetle attack of 2010-2012 has really decimated the area, and far more trees are down everywhere than there had been years earlier.  Consequently, the path along the river played out earlier than in the past and most of the hike was over, under and around sizable dead logs in addition to the natural rugged terrain underneath.  In fact, it took quite a bit of hiking to locate the area where the tree was located.  

I was able to verify the tree by comparing the logs and vegetation and even the sticks around it to the pictures I had taken on June 3rd.  I had put a small stone next to the tree but it wasn't there the second time.  I'm wondering if it just settled down into the pine cone scale right there.  I'll check that next time.

        

I was going to get some bigger rocks to put there, but by that time, it had started to drizzle and the mosquitos had come out in force, so I headed quickly back to the trailer.  I figured I'd go do that the next morning.  

Sunday, the 24th.  It rained during the night and kept up during the morning.  I finally decided that I wouldn't be able to go back up to the tree again.  But it was alright.  I'll be there again.  And soon, the tree will have its own decoration, a brass plaque that will have an inscription on it that will confuse most anyone that would see it.  But they would know something, someone special was close by.  And they'd be right.